BLACK W


Back in the


Since a 2006 change in ownership, Anchor Castings has rebuilt much of its facility and established itself as a dependable 10-person job shop. NICHOLAS LEIDER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR


hen Bill Wolf- gram purchased Anchor Cast- ings in Neenah,


Wisconsin, in 2006, he didn’t have much experience with metalcasting operations. In fact, he’d never even seen the inside of one. The lifelong entrepreneur had owned a number of retail businesses, ranging from a pet supplies store to a company focused on recycling antifreeze to a sports complex. But a decade ago, Wolfgram


entered the casting industry after a number of visits to the 15,000-sq.- ft. Anchor Castings. Te nonfer- rous casting operation had fallen on difficult times by 2006, after being purchased by an employee in 1993. Te equipment was outdated. Te facility was unkempt and poorly lit. Te quality of the castings wasn’t meeting customers’ demands. In light of such considerations, it’s


only natural to ask: What, exactly, did Wolfgram see in such an operation? “Tis was the first foundry I’ve


ever walked into,” he said. “I noticed a few things that needed to be fixed, but all the while, the orders never stopped coming in. Whenever I’d come visit, the demand from customers was always there, even in spite of everything that needed to


38 | MODERN CASTING March 2016


be cleaned up. Te bottom line is, it looked like fun.” In the decade since he purchased


the small job shop, Wolfgram has invested nearly $1 million to update equipment, increase storage, streamline accounting practices and minimize pattern storage. With a lean 10-person workforce, Anchor Castings is revitalized in filling an interesting niche in the metalcasting market, providing castings and pro- totypes to end-users in a wide variety of industries, including architectural, food processing, and pump impellers and volutes. Anchor Castings also works with other, larger casting facili- ties for short runs and collaborative R&D projects.


Renewed Reinvestment Although Anchor Castings was


buoyed by a steady stream of orders when it was bought, Wolfgram knew improvements needed to be made—in the facility, in the casting process and on the business side of the operation. Pouring roughly 75% brass/bronze and 25% aluminum, the facility had equipment that had not been properly maintained or updated for decades. A new roof was installed in 2007. Te next year, major improvements included a new green sand muller, nobake mixer and induction furnace.


Te shop floor was resurfaced and lighting improved. General cleaning became an emphasized ongoing task. “We needed to do a lot,” Wolf-


gram said. “After we improved how we did business, we needed to look at the shop. We needed to revitalize a lot of what we used to make qual- ity castings.”


One labor-intensive project


focused on Anchor Castings’ stor- age of patterns. In the months and years after the transition in owner- ship, the number of patterns on-site was halved, from nearly 8,000 to the roughly 3,500 currently stored in the main facility and a separate warehouse. Many of the stored pat- terns were obsolete. Employees went through the inventory piece by piece, calling customers to see if pieces should be kept, returned or discarded. Te transition in human resources


was equally dramatic. Under the previous owners, the shop had 16 full- time employees. Within a few years of the new ownership, just two remained while the staff underwent consider- able turnover. Within the first six months Wolfgram hired Tom Zabor- ski, who had a vast knowledge of casting operations and maintenance. (Since retired, Zaborski still comes in once a week just to stay connected.) Wolfgram hired Dennis Kiekhaefer as


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